Electronic commerce, or e-commerce, solutions may be broadly divided into two types of enterprises. The first is a virtual enterprise comprising an e-commerce site having no physical store or location which is accessible by clients. The second is a traditional brick and mortar establishment (for example, an electronics retailer or a music retailer) having both physical store(s) and an e-commerce site for online purchasing.
For a virtual e-commerce enterprise the purchased goods are delivered to the consumer or client using a postal or courier service and for certain goods, such as software, electronic delivery may also be used. Similarly, traditional brick and mortar establishments with an e-commerce site use postal or courier services to deliver purchased goods to the client. A trend in traditional brick and mortar and e-commerce establishments is to offer the options of delivery or in-store pickup by the customer. In-store pickup offers a customer with an opportunity to save on shipping charges and/or get the purchased goods quicker.
However, current solutions for in-store pickup are not tailored to transactions with mobile communication devices. Accordingly, there remains a need for improvements in the art for e-commerce or online transactions with in-store customer pickup.